Facing the Clock
by satanslut
Summary: *Sequel to The Faceless Clock* A year has passed since Willow was kidnapped and things are beginning to change. Angel/Drusilla, Angel/Willow.
1. Facing the Clock: Part One: Drusilla

Facing the Clock: Part One: Drusilla

Drusilla had never been a creature of time. Before, she had wondered why humans kept track of it. All that mattered to her then was that their lives were short and her life was eternal. What use were numbers and names for days and months and years? Why measure time at all?

Now, however, such things seemed to be important – or at least they were to Daddy. Today was exactly one year to the day when Daddy had come to fetch his Willow-doll and decided never to take her back to her home. It seemed such a very long time. Was this what it felt like to humans, this sticky-caught feeling of time stretching and pulling at you like taffy, making you its slave as you stayed aware of each minute like a disease eating away your flesh until nothing was left but sad, lonely bones?

Drusilla didn't want to be human.

One more punishment this was, for angering the stars. One more affliction born of too much love for Daddy.

_There is a birthday party going on and she's disobeying Daddy by being out of her room, but she can't resist a party, especially not such a one as she's never been to in all her days. Once, Spike read her a story about a little girl who had a birthday party. The stars and her dollies still spoke to her then and their voices distracted her, but some words remain, swirling like candy floss in her memory. At birthday parties there are presents and cake and lots of other little girls._

_But the only voices she hears in the dining room are Willow's and Daddy's and there's only the beating of one little heart. This won't do. It's not a proper party at all._

_She peeps around the door and sees the prezzies on the table. There are pretty dresses and books and jewels but…_

_Daddy has it all wrong, silly Daddy. No wonder the pretty red princess looks so sad upon her throne. Because Drusilla remembers very clearly that Spike's book said that there is one kind of present that is the best kind of present and William was a scholar so his book must be right._

_She creeps back to her room and gets it – exactly what every girl wants on her birthday – and she tiptoes back to the dining room. Daddy looks ever so cross as she enters._

_"Drusilla, I thought I told you that you weren't welcome here?"_

_But Willow looks quite pleased, bounding over and giving Drusilla a hug. "Thank you for coming to my birthday."_

_She is warm and soft and smells like clouds and carousels. She lets go and Drusilla reaches into the pocket of her dress. She had no crinkly paper in which to wrap the present, but she knows that won't matter. Because her present is just right._

_She hands it to Willow, and the little girl smiles. It's blinding and so pretty and she thinks she could look at such a mouth forever if it smiled like that always._

_"Thank you." There are tears in the girl's eyes and they confuse Drusilla for a moment. "This is the best present I've ever been given." She hugs Drusilla again. "What's her name?"_

_"Miss Edith." Dru hopes she likes her new Mummy better and sings for her when they're alone._

_Daddy stares at her with eyes of ice and flame. Perhaps she was supposed to have given him a present as well._

She'd left the party, though Willow clutched at her hand as if she were a little girl and Drusilla were her Mummy. It was sharp, like what she recalled pain had been when she was human and it had occurred to her to wonder if, should she be cut open, they'd find some bright, horrid soul inside her now, ticking like a clock-thief come to steal away her eternity.

She hung onto her days like sand, not willing to let a grain slip through her slim and grasping fingers. Perhaps if she danced with them, gave them things to do, many more days would come to play with her and more after them and she would keep her forever locked up with the tea and cakes she never served her dollies. She'd been spending time lately trying to learn things; trying to fill the great black void once swirling with stars and delightful visions with something…anything. Idleness was the devil's workshop, so Drusilla did her best to make toys and games out of what was there. Cooing over and dandling her days like children.

Sometimes she would reach into the thick, terrible blankness and find a memory, like a diamond all wrapped in coal. Her favorites were of clever things Spike had told her, or passages of books he'd read to her. She should have loved him, she realized, and she wondered why she didn't.

She loved Daddy.

_"Angel," she coos, her voice more cautious and never claiming him as her own, not anymore._

_He says nothing. His mouth finds hers, but it's not a kiss. It's nothing like a kiss. She wonders how Daddy can drain her without ever using his teeth. She wishes he knew she would give him everything, unto her very dust, if only he would love her even a little._

_She would give it all to him now._

_She hears nothing but the death rattle sound of his fingers against her flesh. She feels like the corpse that humans have told her she is when she's with him. Her skin is parchment and her lips cold and torn, her body crumbling around his cock as if it were a stake. Does he think that's where her heart is? Empty and welcoming between her legs?_

_She shatters, the way she always does with her Daddy, and he spills sticky-ice inside her. She says nothing as he dresses and leaves._

There would never be such nights again. Would she miss them, she wondered, despite their empty mockery, or would she forget them in time as her dollies had forgotten her?

Happy Birthday, Willow, she sang tunelessly to herself, though the birthday party was long since over and it was something called an anniversary today. She knew of no songs for such an occasion, but she'd at least been a good daughter and given her Daddy a present this time…a present she found under a toadstool in the garden she'd once shared with the stars.

Daddy would be not-Daddy forever now, no matter that he took his sceptre to his new princess for her keeping.

Drusilla would see Daddy much less because of this, she knew, but somehow it would be all right. For all his cold growls, he had promised his daughter he would always give her a home. She would hang curtains and make samplers for the walls and it would be a very pretty place to live.

The screams were not hanging in the air yet, but they would be soon. Once Daddy took his little red sparrow back to her cage, one party would end and the next would begin.

Could Willow ever forgive her? After all, it wasn't Dru's fault that she loved her Daddy.

End Drusilla


	2. Facing the Clock: Part Two: Angel

Facing the Clock: Part Two: Angel

It was their anniversary today.

Amazing what a year had done. Angel had chased after Drusilla thinking he would rescue Willow, save her from his insane childe, and instead…

He had saved _himself_– saved himself from a stifling caricature of teenage calf-love; from a life of self-denial and shadows; from a world where he had to apologize for each breath he never took and for an existence that he could hardly, with any justice, be blamed for continuing. He had saved himself from never knowing what it meant to truly love.

_"It's a beautiful night."_

_His arm is around Willow as they walk along a deserted street, preceded and followed at a discreet distance by trusted bodyguards. There are stars above and the sky is clearer than it ever was in Sunnydale. He hopes that Willow finally sees how much better the world he's given her is than the one she came from._

_If he was hoping to start a conversation, well, he's failed in that regard. He always does. Someday, though, it will be different._

_She stares off into nothingness and shivers as he pulls her closer to him. He pretends it's because she's cold and he tells himself that she isn't thinking of Sunnydale. It doesn't matter. He loves her. Amazingly, that's enough._

It really _was_ enough, and Angel marveled at that. He'd known so little of love before that it was still startling to know that when you truly gave your heart, it didn't matter at all if the one you loved accepted it or returned the favour.

Not that Willow wouldn't. A passion such as his waging war against a heart as pure and open as hers? How could he fail? How could he not, at the end, emerge with her love as his very own?

He stared across the table at her as she sat silently, chewing each bite of her cheeseburger numberless times before swallowing. He knew her game by now, knew that she was stretching out the meal for as long as possible, knew she wanted to delay their departure for her bedroom.

_"I don't love you." She's said it so many times that he's lost count. He wonders what she thinks repetition will do._

_"I know. It doesn't matter." And he has said those words as many times as she has proclaimed her absence of affection. The difference is that he knows they are just sounds and he expects nothing of them by way of accomplishment._

_He reaches out to touch her and she flinches. She doesn't pull away. He knows it's because she can't escape, but he indulges himself with the fancy that it's really because she doesn't want to pull away at all, that a part of her aches for his caress._

_He kisses her. As they part, he wonders whose lips are colder._

The party, or at least that's what it was to him, remained a silent affair. He could, he supposed, have invited Drusilla, but he was jealous of Willow's attention, knowing she would cling to his childe simply to spite him as she had done at her birthday party. What other explanation could there be? Still, the memory of her cuddling Drusilla's wretched doll was agonizing. To this day, the doll sat on Willow's bed. Nothing he gave her, no matter how beautiful or costly, no matter how thoughtfully chosen, had ever been received so warmly. If he could, he would throw Miss Edith on the fire and watch her turn to ash and soot.

It wasn't as if she'd ever asked him for a doll. He could reconcile himself to her reaction if she had. But this was no unbecomingly baggy sweater or useless laptop computer. Willow had never once asked him for a toy.

Contrariness and temper – her childish vices. They offered the only excuse there could be for her ridiculous fondness for that doll…and for Drusilla.

_It's that time, the time when need drives him to Drusilla's bed._

_He enters the room, surprised and annoyed to find Drusilla clothed and not supine and ready for his taking. Wasting his time. Precious seconds, even minutes, which she's amputating from his hours with Willow._

_"My Angel," she says, her voice a coo long since become repugnant to him, a coo which has been blessedly silent for many weeks. He wonders what has resurrected it now._

_He says nothing, letting the hard stare he offers her serve as his request for enlightenment._

_"I have a prezzie for you." She creeps towards him in that childish way he'd formerly allowed her to believe was so adorable. "It's what you've been wan-ting." He's reminded of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane now; Drusilla's simulacrum of girlhood is a gruesome thing._

_Her words, however, penetrate through the fog created by her posturing after a moment. "Do you now?" he asks, the brogue of long-gone days insinuating itself into his voice._

_She smiles and he smiles in return. It's little enough to pay for his heart's desire. She prattles and he listens. The smile remains._

That had been just two nights ago. He'd held his tongue that night and since, preferring to save this precious change in the nature of his being for a special occasion. How would things change between himself and Willow, he wondered, now that his forbearance was transformed into an act of chivalry rather than an act of self-preservation?

_She's marble under his hands as he touches her. She doesn't stiffen, but she's motionless and unyielding and that's sufficient to tell him (as if he needed to be told) that she is far from a willing participant in their embrace. He would have stopped before; he doesn't now. Simply knowing that he could take her if he wanted to, that he *will* take her someday, is enough to mollify a demon now chastened by the knowledge it will never have free reign. Her resistance no longer threatens to provoke that demon beyond his powers of control. It can be patient, *he* can be patient. So he kisses her still, allows his hands to caress her back through the soft fabric of her robe._

_Soon, he thinks, as he finally relinquishes his hold and leaves the room, whispering "I love you" as she closes the door behind him…soon._

At last, the meal was over. The party decorations had wilted in the heat of the lights and the staff struggled to hide the boredom and itch of inactivity. He nodded in their direction, letting them know they could start clearing now. Willow was looking around for something to use as an excuse to prolong the evening; Angel just made sure it couldn't be done.

Did she know somehow? He wondered as he watched her hand shake while she pushed her chair back, not waiting for his assistance. He stopped her before she could get up, took her arm, helped her rise from her chair. The warmth of her hand in his was a glorious thing. Someday soon that heat would consume him.

Tonight, he decided, when they were in her room, he would tell her the way of things. Then she could see the proof of his love for her in his continued restraint. She would be cowed by the knowledge of what he was now at liberty to do should he choose. Love would come, he knew. But fear had its place in a lover's repertoire, and who was to say that a heart won at the point of a sword was any less true in its passion than one gently wooed?

His hand at the small of her back, he guided her down the hall. It was a walk he'd taken for a year now, but tonight he wouldn't be leaving her at the door before going off to slake his hunger with Drusilla. That alone would tell her that change was in the air. Of course, he didn't expect to occupy her bed this very night, but soon…soon…and he could wait that little while. He could wait.

End Angel


	3. Facing the Clock: Part Three: Willow

Facing the Clock: Part Three: Willow

Willow had been Angel's captive for exactly one year as of today.

It felt like forever. She could hardly believe it had been only a year. There were days when she found it almost impossible to recall Xander's laugh clearly, when Buffy's smile was fuzzy, when Oz's eyes were dim in her memory. Those were the terrible days.

_"Can I have a computer? You can sit here and watch while I use it. I won't even sign up for an email account. I just want to go online again. Please?"_

_"You need to get out of this room more. I've been neglecting you." Another non sequitur._

_She wants to scream in frustration and anguish. Doesn't he care that her fingers ache for the feel of a keyboard beneath them? That she's tormented at the thought that all this time has ticked away and technology might have passed her by, leaving her little more capable than Cordelia was when Willow was yanked from her life and everything she held dear?_

_"Just an hour a day on a computer? Please?" She's almost kneeling before him, tears in her eyes and her voice cracking with emotion. She realizes that she *would* kneel for him right now, kneel down and suck his cock, do *anything* just to have that precious link to who she is. It's only the knowledge of what whoring herself to Angel would actually lead to that keeps her from stripping the last vestiges of dignity from herself and exposing the desperate state to which she's been reduced. "Once a week even?"_

_"A friend of mine is having a dinner party tonight. Just a small affair, but his house is filled with art. You'll love seeing it." He smiles at her in that hateful, patronizing way that makes her long for a stake. "Yes, that will be just the thing. You'll feel much better getting out and socializing."_

_With that, he leaves._

_She throws herself on the bed and sobs. She hasn't cried so loudly or so violently in months, maybe ever. But hope is dead and another piece of who she is has been ripped out of her forever. Was this what it had been like for Marcie Ross?_

There was no computer in her room or anywhere in the world for all she knew anymore. She hadn't asked again; the memory of what she would have been willing to do to get one was too degrading for her to endure feeling so ever again.

She'd had her first nightmare since being kidnapped that very night. In it, she'd let Angel do as he pleased with her and when it was over, he'd laughed…she had suddenly found herself in a barren cell with no books or comforts of any kind. She'd woken up with the sound of his cheerless mirth still ringing in her ears.

_"You look beautiful." His voice is husky, filled with a desire that makes the bile rise in her throat._

_She ignores him, not caring a bit that it's bad manners to let a compliment pass unacknowledged. She'd be ruder by far if she wasn't afraid of him._

_If he's hurt by her coldness, he doesn't show it. He never does. One of many, many reasons that her hatred of him burns ever brighter._

_"I have a present for you," he says. She refuses to allow herself to hope it's something that she wants._

_But for a moment, hope *does* rise to dizzying heights within her as Angel wheels in…a television on a cart. She can watch the news again; figure out where in the world she even is. She's on the verge of being impossibly and painfully grateful…until she notices the absence of an antenna. It's not as if there's a cable hook-up in this room._

_"We can watch movies together now, sweetheart," he nearly carols, as Willow notices the VCR built in to the set. One more torture she must endure, one more stratagem he's devised to inflict his company on her despite the silence with which she tries desperately to keep him at bay._

_Somehow she knows that there's no copy of The Princess Bride in his newly-bought video library._

Willow hated him, hated his stifling presence, hated the 'friends' he forced her to meet and the sights he forced her to see, hated the movies he sat with her to watch and the books he gave her to read. If she ever escaped him, she would never look at great art or read a classic novel ever again. She would only read modern, trashy potboilers. She would collect Leroy Neiman prints and watch MTV all day long. She would embrace Ayn Rand and fawn over factories and ugly new buildings. She would buy a new computer and stay on it until she knew every site on the internet.

She would beg the Council to make her a Slayer and she would kill every vampire on the face of the Earth.

_He's been careless tonight, hasn't managed to hide all traces of who and what he is. There's a smudge of blood at the corner of his mouth and Willow is transfixed by it. It's the only honesty she's seen in him since this whole tragic business began. It's the story of his life told in colour and texture right by the lower lip of that cruel, prevaricating mouth._

_Of course, after a few seconds – seconds which seem unrealistically long and full and quiet – he judges the trajectory of her stare and wipes the truth away with the tip of a long, white finger. For a moment as brief as the seconds were endless, he seems unsettled. Willow wishes she could keep that moment for all her days. Seeing the haunted, uncomfortable look in those usually certain eyes was the closest thing to joy she's known…the closest thing she will likely *ever* know._

_Now she understands why the gypsies gave him his soul. She thinks that his knowledge of the curse, his fear of being a demon again, is the icing on the cake of their vengeance. May he live in such terror forevermore._

She chewed the last bite of her cheeseburger and struggled to swallow it. Only Angel could take the joy out of one of her favorite foods. But then again, this gourmet rendition of the American classic had hardly been what she had in mind when she asked for a burger. She was tired of _haute cuisine_. As a normal American teenager, she craved sugar and grease and preservatives, not costly ingredients combined in unnatural ways. Whatever cheese had graced that patty, it certainly had never seen a moment wrapped in plastic in a supermarket dairy case.

The servants began to clear the dinner plates and Willow felt an odd sense of foreboding as she accepted the inevitable and got up from the table. Angel, ever the grotesque mockery of a gentleman, insisted on attending her.

There was something different in his touch tonight, though she couldn't name it, and his will more than her effort propelled her down the hall towards her bedroom.

"Happy Anniversary," he said, his voice low and his inflection alarming.

She held her breath as they got to her door and he opened it. He didn't turn to leave for Drusilla's room the way he usually did. She exhaled as she remembered the clause. Thank heavens it was there to protect her.

He followed her inside her bedroom and closed the door.

End Willow


End file.
